


leave the light on

by astrolesbian



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 13:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2622824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrolesbian/pseuds/astrolesbian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The green Hulk has not yet been identified,</i> the reporter says. <i>But many are questioning if its involvement was really with the Avengers at all. Could it have been an enemy weapon, gone berserk? Only time will tell, but --</i></p><p>She switches off the television. </p><p>Even now, they can’t bring themselves to thank him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	leave the light on

**Author's Note:**

> there is not enough brucebetty fic and it makes me very, very sad. here is my small contribution.

A few months after Harlem, she got a necklace in an envelope and a note that said _I’m sorry_. The note did not say _wait for me,_ and it offered no explanations, but somehow she has found herself waiting anyway.

She is so tired.

She feels like she has been waiting since far, far before Harlem, like she has been waiting for a very long time.

 

Some nights, she still wakes up screaming.

She sees things on the undersides of her eyelids that most people would want to forget. Tanks, gun, explosions -- there are rushes of heat and blazing fire over her body and then there is nothing, just cruel blankness, a horrible roar ringing in her ears. The roaring draws out, then. It gets harsh, and painful to hear, and rattles off into whimpers, and she wakes up sweating, mouthing his name against her sheets, mouthing  _please don't hurt him, please don't take him away, please, please, please._

She should hate these dreams.

But she is selfish, or maybe just self-destructive. If it means she can see him, if only for a moment, she tolerates the nightmares. It means he’s still alive, at least within the dream. And she is so afraid of him not being alive.

Her old boyfriend, the psychiatrist, said she needed help. She kicked him out.

Who knows, though. Maybe she does.

 

“Betty,” a woman says one day, at work. “You look so tired. Are you sleeping at all?”

She forces a smile. “Just a lot of grading. I’m fine.”

_It’s okay, it’s okay._

She closes her eyes. Maybe she needs to hear that too, sometimes. (What she wouldn’t do to hear it. What she wouldn’t do to hear him say it. God, she misses him like a limb some days.)

Some days she is okay. Some days she can tell herself that, and it feels true. But some days the loss of him drowns her. Some days she drowns, but not so much from loss as from not knowing. She has always been too curious. She has always needed to _know_.

She doesn’t know if he is here, or there, or himself, or the other guy, and it’s terrifying, and it drowns her.

But she straightens up, and she keeps going. The necklace that was her mother’s dangles safely around her neck. He is alive. He must be.

That is knowledge enough for her to go on.

 

He used to say he didn’t know what he’d do without her. She always said he would be fine, he would be okay, they would both be okay. But now she wonders.

Now, she wonders if _she_ is fine; wonders if she can go on like this, without him, without knowing what has happened to him. She doesn’t think so. Someday she’s going to break. Someday the loss of him is going to hit her like a tidal wave and she’s going to be bowled over by it and it will hurt, and she will collapse. The idea of it scares her, but it also feels inevitable, and she hates herself for it, for being so dependent on a _maybe_.

She is supposed to be strong. She is strong. She hasn’t spoken to her father in years. She has built a life for herself. She is a professor, a scientist; respected. She grades theses and writes research papers and tries to find the next big thing, just like everyone else. She has been called _brilliant_. She guesses it’s true. She’s never really known how to turn it off.

She learned how to fight a few years ago, because she thought she might need it. Last month, a man tried to steal her purse in the city, and she elbowed him in the back until he let go. Her father would be proud, but the victory of it tasted sour. She doesn't want to be a girl her father would be proud of. 

She’s never moved away from this college, this town, just in case he might come back. That’s not strong. That’s dependent. Some days she wants to run away, looking for him. At least then she'd be making a stand. At least then she wouldn't be sitting there like a wife from the forties waiting for her husband to return from war. At least then she wouldn't feel so helpless.

But she can’t leave. He might need her, someday. He might come back.

She visits the pizza shop every other day, just to check.

She leaves her porch light on.

 

(Back in grad school, back when she didn’t have this gray at her temples and this worry holding down her heart, she met the love of her life.

He was gentle, warm; his hair was curly, and she thought that was funny, and then he cut it short, and she missed the curls. He was a biologist, like her. They used to get drunk on the roof of one of the campus labs and look up at the stars and talk about the magical reality of them. How they exploded into supernovae and shrank into blue dwarves and you could see the light of them shining from a hundred billion miles away. How they were massive, brilliant, and it would take thousands of years for us to reach them and practically no time at all, compared, for them to reach us. How the universe was all cheerful, beautiful coincidence, how if you looked at brain cells they looked like some galaxies, how freckles looked like nebulae, how the human body was made of universal dust reused and recycled since the big bang. He would say the world was beautiful.

His eyes were so bright, back then. Bright like the stars.)

 

She hasn’t seen him for two years when the aliens invade New York.

By that time, the world is less shaky. Tony Stark announced that he made a suit of armor and stopped making weapons. It’s been two years since she’s spoken to her father. Her father loved Tony Stark, called him a _True American Patriot_. She wonders how he’s feeling right now.

The aliens invade New York and she hears it on the radio and turns her car in the direction of the city but they don’t let her in. They say it’s too dangerous. They sit her in a back room with a cup of coffee and offer to fill up her car's tank so she can make it home. They let her watch the news. They are kind about it, but they don't let her go. They keep here there, keep her watching, keep her passive, just like always.

They are sorry, they say, but they have their orders. She knows the orders come from her father.

She watches him on that television in New York, fighting aliens, and it would sound absurd if it wasn’t her reality; if she hadn’t see his skin ripple and turn green two years ago, if she hadn’t seen him fight the abomination he’d helped create and carry her out of the line of fire and exist, and breathe, and live. A biological marvel. A miracle. 

But then again, he always was.

 

She tried to call Stark Industries and ask where he was, but no one had any answers. No one knew who the green monster was. All they knew is he had fought with Stark, and now he was gone.

( _Monster_ , they called him. After he saved their lives.)

Later on, on the television, people are calling them _the Avengers_. They are calling Iron Man and Captain America the leaders. They say they were fighting something called Chitari. The few video clips show Iron Man flying, lighting crackling, arrows flying. And she sees him, looking not so much like a monster as he does a green blur, running and snarling, and her heart aches. She reaches out with two fingers to touch the television screen.

( _Captain America_ , she will eventually realize, wearily. As if the world wasn’t crazy enough already, men are coming back from the dead.

Captain America with his super soldier serum. The one mystery she never should have tried to unlock. Look what it led them to. Look what it did to the only man she's ever loved. Look what it costs, to discover the secrets of the universe.)

 _The green Hulk has not yet been identified,_ the reporter says. _But many are questioning if its involvement was really with the Avengers at all. Could it have been an enemy weapon, gone berserk? Only time will tell, but --_

She switches off the television.

Even now, they can’t bring themselves to thank him.

 

(She tries not to watch television anymore. She has had enough of people calling him a monster.

Her father does an interview on a talk show criticizing all of the Avengers, calling them a disgrace, calling them horrible. Saying the military should be the ones defending America. Her father agrees. Her father says Tony Stark is a disgrace to the military and so are the rest of these _Avengers_.

“Especially the green freak,” he says. The talk show host laughs and agrees. Her stomach hurts, and she forces herself to stop watching.)

 

Her old boyfriend drops in on her after the battle in New York.

“I saw what happened on the televison,” he says. “Has he contacted you at all? Or written, or anything? That looked pretty nasty.”

She shakes her head, not wanting to admit it, but not wanting to lie. He sighs, and sits down next to her on the couch, his hand on her shoulder, careful and gentle and strange. She hasn't touched anyone in a long time, she realizes. She misses having someone to give affection to. She misses him. 

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” the psychiatrist says gently, “but maybe you should move on. It doesn’t have to be with me. It doesn’t have to be with _anyone_. But maybe you should think about it.”

She doesn’t move, doesn’t shake her head, but doesn’t nod, either. He sighs again, the sigh of resigned acceptance that she has seen in so many people, over the years. 

“Think about it,” he repeats, and kisses her forehead before leaving. She almost wants to tell him not to.

She doesn’t cry, not until he’s gone.

 

Her mother was strong.

She remembers near the end, when her mother was sick and she was seven, and she got the necklace as a Christmas present and she cried, because she was old enough to know what it meant, to get that necklace. She was old enough to know it meant the necklace wouldn’t have been around her mother’s neck much longer. The General told her to be strong. He didn’t frown, or smile. He just stood there and watched her weep, holding the necklace.

Sometimes she wishes her mother could have taught her how to be strong. Sometimes she wishes the General had hugged her, back then.

That was another thing that they had had in common, when they’d first fallen in love.

They’d both had terrible fathers.

 

(His real first name was Robert, and he never used it.

His father’s name was Robert, too.)

 

Sometimes, on the rare occasions when her dreams aren’t nightmares, she dreams of children.

They have his curls, or his eyes, or her eyes, or her nose. They laugh and play and read books about the stars. One of them comes back often, in the dream. He holds out a book called _The Little Prince._ She remembers reading it when she was little. The others play, and run, and smile at her, and sometimes they hug her and she almost crumbles to her knees in her rush to hug them back. They are beautiful.

Funny, but she always wakes up crying after these dreams.

She never cries after the nightmares.

 

“Are you okay, Betty?”

She’s sitting in the pizza shop eating a slice of Hawaiian, and Stan’s eyes are kind, and she nods, even as she starts to cry.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he says, and hugs her close to his chest. “I miss him too.”

He holds her, and lets her sob all over him, lets her whisper  _I couldn't help him, I couldn't help him, I couldn't save him. I wasn't good enough._

He tells her that it is okay.

Funny. That's what she's been looking to hear, this whole time. That she was okay. Or just that someday, eventually, she could be.

 

(Once when they were in grad school, he fell off a ledge in one of the parking lots that was ten feet above solid asphalt.

They had been eating lunch outside in the sunshine. They’d spent all day inside, studying. He was laughing, and she’d flicked some mayonnaise at him, and he’d laughed even harder, and then she was laughing too, they were both laughing; and he’d leaned in, as if to kiss her (despite the mayonnaise) and he’d fallen.

She’d screamed.

Three people had come running, and she’d hurried to him, but by the time she reached him he was sitting up, looking dazed and confused and alive.

“Lucky,” he’d said, shaky. “That was really lucky.”

“Don’t _do_ that to me,” she said, just as shaky, and he’d wrapped an arm around her in clumsy comfort. “You know, the universe won’t always decide to save your life.”

“Save it?” he’d asked, and she’d smiled. He didn’t believe in saving; he believed in coincidence. But she always did, always had. She believed in second chances. “Save it for what, exactly?”

“If nothing else,” she’d said, “then for me.”

He’d laughed, and she’d stood, and she had hoped the universe would make them immortal.)

 

(Well, maybe it had.

But it forgot about her.)

 

She spends endless nights searching Google for mentions of him. Anything. She hunts for reports of destruction, confusion, the things her father used to look for. Her hands shake. She half hopes she never finds anything.

It’s like a ritual, like a prayer, like desperation. It taste sour in her mouth, but it's all she can do. All she has even been able to do.

She never gets a single lead. But then again, he always has been good at hiding.

 

(Can he really want things this way? Can he really want her out of his life?

Maybe she needs him more than he needs her.)

 

She still watches the news every morning, just in case.

Tony’s Stark’s house has burned down. Thor has been spotted in London. Steve Rogers was dug out of some ice, and now lives in Washington, D.C. Stark Industries is looking into making prosthetics, and hearing aids, and the like. People are stranger than ever. The most popular Halloween costume this year is Captain America, followed closely by the redheaded Black Widow, of all people. Jane Foster, a nuclear physicist, released a paper about dark matter and black holes. They are calling her _brilliant._

Betty reads her paper.

It really is quite brilliant. It would be nice to talk with her about it.

Jane Foster seems to believe in saving, too. Or at least, in universal preference for coincidence. Maybe she's the one who's right, maybe both their theories could be true. Maybe it could have been coincidence  _and_ something more.

 

(She still leaves the porch light on. Just in case.

Hope is a hard thing to hold onto, but she tries, goddamn it, she _tries_.)

 

It’s been three years since she’s seen his face or spoken to her father when the government security falls into collapse.

Her father calls.

She doesn’t pick up.

But the voicemail plays itself, and she can’t help it; she stands still to listen.

 _“Sweetheart, the government_ \-- static -- _the government has been hacked. Please stay safe. Stay safe --”_

 _Stay safe_ , she thinks.

She knows what that means.

That means _stay safe, Betty, don’t be too curious, Betty, don’t research it, Betty. Don’t be brilliant, Betty. Be ordinary. Don’t be yourself. Don’t look into it. Be someone else, be a good little girl, be safe._

_Don’t go to New York, Betty, don’t find him, Betty, don’t look for him, don’t be curious, Betty._

_Be ordinary._

She unplugs her phone.

 

“Betty,” a woman in her department, an old woman with dyed hair to hide the grays, says at work. “Didn’t you used to know someone named Bruce Banner?”

She braces herself for the questions, the _where did he go? Poor dear, how like a man, to leave a pretty girl like you?_

“Yes. Why?”

“Well,” the woman says, “he seems to be on the news.”

 _And after two years,_ the reporter is saying. _The identity of the mysterious ‘Hulk’ has been revealed in the great governmental leak. Now I suppose we know how a scientist like Bruce Banner got a job at a place like Stark Industries! Mr. Banner, current director of biochemistry at Stark Industries, has been a mystery to many in both the manner of his appointment and in, in many professional opinions, his under-qualifications --_

Betty switches the television off. Her heart is pounding.

“Betty, dear?”

_Bruce._

“I’m sorry,” she says, “I have to go --”

She runs.

 

Stark Industries.

_Stark Industries._

He’s been in New York, this whole time. And she’s been searching in all the wrong places, she’s been searching for a man in hiding, she’s been searching for whispers of a ghost, of a green monster --

But he has not been hiding.

He is fine.

 

She gets on a bus.

Her hands won’t stop shaking.

Her hands won’t stop shaking, and Bruce is in New York, and everyone knows, and he is probably alone --

She hopes he’s not alone.

Her eyes fall closed and she leans against the window, waiting. Stuck in transition.

 

She always feels so small in this city.

Manhattan Island. Home of the Empire State Building and the newly christened Avengers Tower. Current base of operations for both Stark Industries and, probably, the government.

She’d never even thought of looking for him here. He’s never been comfortable in big cities; he can’t take the press of people at his sides. He gets tired in crowds, tired and irritated and washed-out. She knew he could never be happy here.

Maybe that was the point, though. To not be happy. He has always been such a goddamn martyr.

Still. It’s such a big city.

 

“I’m sorry,” the voice says through the intercom at Avengers Tower. “Mr. Stark has specifically requested that no reporters be let in.”

Betty blinks at it.

“I’m not -- I’m here to see Bruce,” she says.

“Mr. Banner,” the voice says, “has not informed me of any visitors. I’m sorry, but you are not allowed in.”

Betty blinks again.

She tries to imagine turning around and leaving. And then she thinks about Bruce, in this tower. She’s closer to seeing him than she has been in three years. And then she thinks about her father. _Stay safe, Betty._

 _I am not something that should keep safe,_ she thinks. _I am not a jewel. I am not something pretty. I am a scientist. And I will not turn back now._

“Now you listen to me,” she says, angrily. “My name is Doctor Elizabeth Ross, and I am here to see Doctor Robert Bruce Banner, and I have been looking for him for three years trying to make sure he’s okay and you, Mister, you are going to let me in so I can see him, is that clear?”

There’s silence on the other end for a moment, and then the voice breaks through again, almost sounding amused.

“Crystal, ma’am,” he says, and the lock on the door clicks open.

“And by the way,” he adds, as she walks through the door, her head held high and heart pounding, “my name is Jarvis.”

“Thank you, Jarvis,” she says, and a woman walks out of the hall.

“Thank you, Jarvis; I’ll take it from here,” she says, and Betty jumps. The woman smiles and holds out a hand. 

"I'm sorry. This must seem a little bit creepy. But I swear it was a coincidence, I was just heading down here to deal with some of the reporters if I could. But that can wait. You're more important. You said you're here to see Bruce?"

She has light ginger hair and a pretty smile, and she’s wearing a neat suit and stilettos.

“It’s a pleasure, Doctor Ross,” she adds, and Betty nods. “My name’s Pepper Potts.”

She’s the recently appointed CEO, Betty remembers seeing that on the news.

The CEO gestures to the elevator, and smiles again. “Shall we?”

 

There is no elevator music, and it is too quiet.

“Jarvis,” Betty says.

“Yes, Miss Ross?”

“You aren’t a doorman,” she guesses, “are you.”

“I am an AI,” he says. “Created by Mr. Stark to handle the little things about running a company that he . . . prefers to ignore.”

“I see,” Betty says. Her hands are shaking, and so are her knees. This elevator ride is taking an awfully long time, and Bruce is in this tower. She is so, so close

Suddenly, she's scared. She sits down, and watches her knees knock together as they shake, feeling like a child. Pepper makes a small noise of concern. She kneels down too, next to her. The stilettos lay kicked off and forgotten in a corner.

"Are you okay?" Pepper asks, and Betty ignores her, and ignores the rising panic in her throat. All these years, and she never thought that she might ever actually find him; never thought what she might say, never, ever thought --

“Jarvis,” Betty says. “Is there an opening?”

There is a moment of silence, and her knees knock together, and she waits. Pepper lays a hand on her shoulder.

“If there isn’t,” the AI tells her, “then once Mr. Stark knows who you are, Miss Ross, there will be.”

She closes her eyes and forces herself to stand. _Be strong, Betty._  

Pepper rises too, looking worried. “Are you all right? Is it the elevator?”

“I’m fine,” she says, but her mouth is dry, her hands still shaking. Bruce is fifty floors away.

She is okay. She has to be okay.

They stand in silence for a moment, and the floors tick down. Forty-nine. Forty-eight. Forty-seven.

“You’re a biologist,” Pepper says, sounding thoughtful.

“And you’re a CEO,” Betty answers.

Pepper chuckles. “You work with cells,” she clarifies. “That’s your specialty.”

“Yes,” Betty says.

“Then there’s definitely a place for you, if you want it,” she says. “We have some . . . very interesting biological specimens here.”

“And by that, you mean . . ?”

“Captain Rogers, for example.”

“You mean the super soldier serum,” she says flatly. “The thing that turned Bruce into --”

She turns her head away from Pepper’s smiling face. “It does a lot more harm than good,” she says. “I’m never going to try to recreate it.”

“I don’t mean that,” Pepper says gently. “Tony knows the consequences of trying to make another super soldier. We all do. But Steve’s biology, his metabolism -- maybe you could help him to understand it. As it is he eats all day and still feels hungry. He's complained before, but Tony's not exactly that kind of doctor. Well, I mean, he's not really a doctor at all.”

Betty considers this. “How do I know they’ll want me to stay?”

“They’ll want him to be happy,” Pepper says, and smiles. “Trust me.”

That doesn’t answer her question, not really, but Betty lets it be, and watches the floors tick away instead of speaking. Pepper is a warm presence at her side, holding on to her elbow, and she’s grateful for it. Without her here, she might just slump to the ground again.

Her hands are still shaking. She can't make them stop. She is so nervous.

Twenty floors to Bruce.

Then ten, then five, then one --

 

(When she was a little girl, her father said she was beautiful.

She wasn’t sure why the word didn’t sit well with her. It was a good thing, to be beautiful.

Whenever people came to their house, to have dinner and talk with the General, they smiled at her, and said what a pretty girl she was. The men ruffled her hair, and the women kissed her cheeks. She stood there, and let them play with her.

And that was how it felt, like she was a doll --

She buried herself in books about the inner workings of cells, and hung a picture of Marie Curie on her wall. She vowed not to die of radiation poisoning before making big discoveries. She vowed to _make_ big discoveries. She stayed up all night reading books about the universe and stayed up later staring out the window and writing in her journal about how she thought the universe must work. She did college level calculus in sophomore year. 

People still called her beautiful, but when they found out she could have held her own in a conversation about nuclear physics by the time she was seventeen, their smiles got more uncomfortable and they went to talk to someone else.

She met Bruce Banner in the middle of an empty lab in grad school, and he was staring at some calculations on a cheap legal pad; a bowl of soup next to him, stubble on his chin. She leaned over his shoulder.

“It’s a mathematical error there,” she said, pointing. He looked at her, confused, then pushed the glasses off his forehead and onto his nose.

“It is,” he said after a moment. When he looked up at her, her stomach twisted in a deliciously nervous way. His eyes were so warm, and bright like stars, even when he was tired like this. 

“Wow,” he said. “You’re brilliant.”

“Not really,” she’d said, “I think you might just be tired.”

“No, I mean it,” he said, so seriously that she blinked, and couldn’t even bring herself to deny it. “That is _incredible_.”)

 

“Bruce?” Pepper calls into what looks like an empty lab, and Betty almost turns and runs. She feels like she’s seventeen, nervous, giggly and nauseous all at the same time. She’s nearing forty. She’s _too old_ for this nonsense.

The lab is clean and spacious, all cold chrome and blinking light. Betty sort of wants to look at some of the computer screens, that old curiosity rising up, but that’s only half interest because it’s also sort of stalling, and so she moves on. Pepper squeezes her arm comfortingly. She takes a deep breath. It's okay.

“Tony,” Pepper calls, then.

“Yes, honey?”

“Where’s Bruce?” Pepper takes the silly nickname in stride -- or maybe it’s a real nickname. Betty has never known anyone that would say _honey_ without a healthy dose of sarcasm before, but as a scientist she knows there is a first time for everything.

“Two labs over; I think he was looking at the shield substitutes for Cap. Dunno why, metal’s more my area,” and then Tony Stark is standing in front of them, wearing a grease-stained Black Sabbath shirt and holding an even greasier towel.

Pepper takes a step back when he reaches out, as if to hug her. “Work clothes,” she says, and he laughs, and presses a kiss to her cheek without getting grease on her shirt.

“Sorry. Dummy made something blow up again, I swear I’m going to dismantle him,” he says, and then he notices Betty. “Who’s -- wait, oh my _God_ ,” and Betty blinks, overwhelmed, Bruce is _two labs over_ \--

“You’re Elizabeth Ross,” Tony Stark says, “holy _shit_ , I’m so sorry, fanboy moment aside, you wrote the best dissertation on cellular biology I’ve ever read, and it’s to this day the only one I ever read all the way through, it was goddamn _fascinating_. What are you doing in my tower?”

Betty doesn’t know what to say. The world is swimming. Bruce is two labs over, and she feels like she might throw up.

“I know he must seem irritating, but I promise he’s not usually this bad,” Pepper says. She’s smiling like this is all perfectly normal, and Betty takes a deep breath and pulls herself together.

“It’s wonderful to meet you, Mr. Stark,” she says. “And I would love to discuss cellular biology with you, but right now I’m here to see Bruce Banner.”

Almost immediately, Stark’s stance changes -- he shifts from easy-going and excited to protective and wary, in the span of a second. And she understands, suddenly. She _understands_.

“Why?” he says, all suspicion, all protection, and Betty smiles. Stark blinks, looking suddenly confused.

“You've taken care of him,” Betty says, hushed, grateful. “I was so scared -- I thought -- I mean, after what happened with the General, and you being a former weapons dealer, and all -- but you helped keep him safe from them, didn’t you?”

The way he looked at her, in that first second, it matched how she feels when the people on the news call him a monster, matched the feeling that made her jump in front of a tank to stop the General going after him.

Stark is standing very, very still, still looking confused, his brow furrowed.

She takes his hands, not minding the grease. She holds on. The world is spinning too fast, but Bruce is okay. He is safe.

“Thank you,” she says.

 

He’s standing with his back to the door, reading something off of a screen.

Three years, she thinks. His hair is longer, curly again. His glasses are the same. He’s stockier, a little. He looks different, but a healthy different; not half starved and on the run anymore. Her heart aches.

She wipes her shaking hands on the hem of her sweater and takes a deep breath.

“Bruce?”

 

She remembers that first time she saw him, after he'd left and come back and tried to leave again, the rushing of her blood in her ears when she saw him, blocking everything else out, and how she followed him to the bridge in the pouring rain, crying into his shoulder. _I love you, I love you, please don’t go._

She remembers cutting his hair, his mouth gentle on her wrist in a thank-you kiss. She remembers buying him a watch and stretchy pants and laughing together in a pickup truck as they drove, thinking that it was all going to be okay. She remembers him kissing their joined hands in the plane after they thought it was over, and they were flying away. She thought he was safe, then. She thought they were getting out. 

She remembers the rain and the thunder, pounding on the cave walls; remembers how the other guy screamed, the fear in his eyes, remembers whispering that it was okay, it was okay, it was okay. Remembers how the other guy saw her, and knew her, and believed her. How he howled at the lightning, wanting to protect her from the universe. She recognized that, if nothing else. He'd always said he would protect her from everything.

She remembers watching him shrink back down into himself as she held him. Her hands on his wrists, his eyes green and then blue and then green and then blue and then his skin fading back into the color it should be, the green seeping out like some kind of drug that you just had to sweat out. She remembers his hands slipping out of hers as he fell backwards out of a plane.

She screamed at him to stop, and he did. She ran to protect him, and he saved her life. 

She loves him, and she remembers.

 

(When he turns around, there’s a look on his face like he thinks he’s dreaming, and she feels the tears she’s been holding for three years leak out over her cheeks.

They don’t say anything. They just each take three steps and meet in the middle.

He smells like pine and spearmint and home.)

 

“How did you find me?” he breathes into her hair, holding her so tight it hurts, but she’s holding him just as tight, afraid to let him go.

She lets her fingers rest in his strange new curls, and presses her face against his neck.

“You were on the news,” she says finally, shakily, and he laughs, like he can’t believe it. She’s still crying, but when she pulls back to look at him, he’s wiping tears away, too. She reaches up with a thumb and wipes them away, and he catches her hand; presses his face against it. She laughs, too, watery and weak and joyful, all at once.

“I missed you,” he says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think --”

“If you didn’t think I wanted you home maybe you’re not the genius Stark thinks you are,” she says, and reaches up with her other hand to touch both his cheeks, cradling his face.

“I was so scared, Betty,” he says, and his voice is hoarse. “I could have hurt you. I still could.”

She softens.

“I know, sweetheart,” she says. “I know. It’s okay.”

His face crumples, like he’s holding back tears, and she thinks maybe he has needed to hear that just as much as she has, and she pulls him close again, and runs her fingers through his hair, and repeats it.

“I’m here now. We’re together. It’s okay.”

 

(Later, in his room, she sees a collection of crayon drawings on the far wall, which looked like it was once big and blank. They’re all scribbles of green and purple. Some feature Iron Man, too, or the archer who she thinks people are calling Hawkeye. More rarely featured are the other Avengers.

Betty runs her fingers over them. They are all signed with tiny crayon names. Her stomach aches.

Those dreams of children that she has, she thinks, will never go away.

She pauses on one near the center, with a note.

_Deer Hulk, This is a pickture of you that I drew with my baby sister who is 3. you are her favorit becuase she really likes green I think. You are my favorit to even thouh I like red. (She drew the alien and I drew you.) Lucas_

She doesn’t realise she’s crying until his arms are around her.)

 

“Tony pays me,” he says at breakfast the next morning, as they’re sitting side by side, drinking their coffee. “He says he has to. But I don’t use it. I was thinking --”

She watches him, attentive.

“I want to set up a fund,” he says. “For kids. Who lived in homes like mine. And yours. And Clint’s. And Tony’s. So they can get out.”

She presses a hand to his cheek and kisses him softly. “Okay,” she says.

How could anyone ever have thought he was a monster?

 


End file.
